Iso-X: A Flexible Architecture for Hardware-Managed Isolated Execution

Abstract—We consider the problem of how to provide an execution environment where the application’s secrets are safe even in the presence of malicious system software layers. We propose Iso-X — a flexible, fine-grained hardware-supported framework that provides isolation for security-critical pieces of an application such that they can execute securely even in the presence of untrusted system software. Isolation in Iso-X is achieved by creating and dynamically managing compartments to host critical fragments of code and associated data. Iso-X provides fine-grained isolation at the memory-page level, flexible allocation of memory, and a low-complexity, hardware-only trusted computing base. Iso-X requires minimal additional hardware, a small number of new ISA instructions to manage compartments, and minimal changes to the operating system which need not be in the trusted computing base. The run-time performance overhead of Iso-X is negligible and even the over-head of creating and destroying compartments is modest. Iso-X offers higher memory flexibility than the recently proposed SGX design from Intel, allowing both fluid partitioning of the available memory space and dynamic growth of compartments. An FPGA implementation of Iso-X runtime mechanisms shows a negligible impact on the processor cycle time. Keywords-hardware security; isolated execution; I